iPhone App Review: Fluff-Free News from Circa

If you get bored and distracted easily while reading news stories, listen up.

At the 2012 MIMA (Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association) Summit, I attended a class called "Emerging Media: What's Next?" with speaker Soraya Darabi. If you've never heard her name, she basically created the New York Times' social media presence.

Anyway, she spoke about several emerging trends, apps, and social media platforms. She spoke about one in particular that caught my attention, and it wasn't even out yet. It's called Circa, and it promised to be a new way to read news on an iPhone. So, I signed up to be one of the first notified when it was ready to download.

I got the invitation to download last week, and my news reading habits have changed, as promised. You see, I used to get bored and very easily distracted when reading news online. I would skip around stories to try to find the most important and compelling information, and get sidetracked in the process (ooh, an ad about dresses!).

Circa is clean, fresh, and fluff-free. It takes news stories from several sources, grabs the most important bits, and arranges them into an easy-to-read format, short paragraph by paragraph, with maps and images embedded. If you like a story, you follow it. Then, when there's an update to the story, instead of just adding a new story like most news sites would, it updates the one you've already read. It sends you a notification about the update, then opens straight up to the updated page. How's that for snazzy?

Now, instead of tapping the Facebook icon on my phone and wasting brain cells when I've got some minutes to spare, I learn about things. In the world. Happening things. And I like it.

Don't believe me? Read the reviews from TechCrunch and Forbes. Then, go download it in the iTunes store.